CU-Boulder's Radio 1190 turns it up during its 2013 pledge drive

CU's independent station is getting louder

By Ashley Dean dean@coloradodaily.com

Posted:
03/19/2013 07:48:25 PM MDT

University of Colorado senior and Radio 1190 program director Hannah Warner D.J.'s a show on Wednesday, Feb. 29, in the basement of the University Memorial Center on the CU campus in Boulder.
(Jeremy Papasso)

R adio 1190 is in the midst of its pledge drive -- which you can check out and contribute to for excellent concert tickets at radio1190.org. We sat down with general manager Mikey Goldenberg to talk about the growth the University of Colorado's independent radio station has seen in the past year and why the fundraising matters.

It seems like, since last time we talked, the Radio 1190 community presence has grown. What have you been up to in the past year?

I agree, it's definitely become a bigger media entity in Boulder and Denver and we've just been trying to be a more involved community radio station that's focused on education, community relationships and music as a whole, both nationally and locally, especially.

So, just trying to engage ourselves and make people aware that Radio 1190 is a strong presence and has been around for a really long time and has been influential in the community aspects of Denver and Boulder.

I see a lot of that as concert sponsoring. I see you attached to a lot of shows.

We promote over 300 shows a year at all the major venues, Red Rocks included, and we just really pride ourselves in giving our listeners and our fans concert tickets to shows that they want to go and see, free and easy, and make us a resource for them to find tickets to those shows, where other radio stations in town and in the market aren't doing that.

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We're doing a lot of local performances, in-studio performances. Our Local Shakedown show has live performances every Friday. We're doing a big thing this week called 1190's Afternoon Delight for our pledge drive, where we're having local artists come in and do live performances and come on the air and talk about the importance of community radio -- and how, as a college radio station, we're a real jumping-off point for them.

I noticed changes on the site, including a lot more album reviews.

CU-Boulder's Radio 1190 music director Sam Goldner. (Ashley Dean)

We just totally redid the website, so it's a much greater resource for people for videos that we're doing, content that we're posting, interviews, different things from all kinds of walks of the independent life.

We want to become that on-air resource for the community, but also an online resource. We have a very strong group of taste-makers here within the radio station and within the university itself that are curating different things -- from concert performances, to on-air interviews, to art, to fashion, to a lot of other independent things.

All of that said, why is the pledge drive important to keep you doing what you do?

It's hard to go out there and ask people for money. I'm the first person to admit that, but we're important. Part of my job over the last 15 months, with the reorganization and retooling of 1190, is to show people that we are important and that we're not just a student-run radio station. We're the student-run station in the state that has been doing it for a really long time ... The pledge drive itself -- we're trying to create a much more digital presence. We have a new digital platform this year that uses our fans as fundraisers for the radio station itself. They can reach out to their connections and their networks to share why they think that we're important. We can try to reach further out into the internet, so to speak, and engage more people who might not know about us, who might not be aware of the kind of content we're providing and the types of individuals that are programming the radio station inside and out to provide a really unique aspect of the independent world that we live in.

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